The ecological power, parts, purposes, people, processes, products, and plac- es that dialectically make up and are created in antiracist classroom writing as- sessment ecologies reveal the complexities of simply judging writing in a class without doing more harm to students who do not already come to the class demonstrating a white racial habitus. These elements offer ways to explicitly reflect upon a number of questions that help students understand the fuller con- ditions under which their writing is judged and produces other products (learn- ing), which then provides them power to change those conditions and products. While not all of these ecological elements can be interrogated in any given class. My hope is that teachers and students figure out which elements offer them the most productive investigations into antiracist writing assessment practices. Since all elements inter-are with the others in the ecology, focusing on one or two can often lead to discussions of other elements.
Power is the overarching element within ecologies that is constructed by techniques, spaces, processes, and other disciplining tactics. Reflecting upon it and negotiating its terms, such as negotiating what control students have to design assignments, assessment processes, and expectations, students can deter- mine better their own relations in the ecology. This provides agency and better chances to problematize their writing assessment situations, which will mean critiquing the dominant discourse and the white racial habitus that informs it.
Parts are the codes and artifacts, with their own internal biases, that are used to discipline bodies and writing, and to identify and judge. Parts, such as eval- uation rubrics and dominant discourses valued in ideal texts, have historical as- sociations with a white racial habitus, which usually end up privileging students who come to the classroom performing those dispositions already and disenfran- chising local diversities. Parts are often the most immediate and easiest element to reflect upon and negotiate in an assessment ecology with students.
Purposes for any antiracist writing assessment ecology is vital to its func- tioning and should be discussed and negotiated carefully with students. A clear antiracist dominant purpose provides ways for students to understand and act in the ecology, to understand the fuller implications of their labor as an antiracist project. The dominant purpose I’ve offered for antiracist assessment ecologies is one that interrogates racism in writing assessment and judgment practices. It asks students to problematize their existential writing assessment situations over
and over, posing problems about the way they and their colleagues judge their language, considering as part of the problems a comparison to their understand- ings of a white racial habitus that informs the dominant discourse promoted in the classroom.
People in antiracist writing assessment ecologies are not considered homog- enous, nor are they simply stakeholder groups with uniform needs and wants. Like any geographic or urban environment, people in antiracist writing assess- ment ecologies who move about on the landscape are diverse in many ways, which affect their ways of reading and judging, and the entire system. Students can reflect upon their own subject positions as informed by historically shifting racial, cultural, and social formations that compel particular habitus, which they may be using to assess texts. Paying attention to who they are, without falling into the trap of a priori and essentializing assumptions about people, can help students problematize.
The processes that make up an antiracist assessment ecology are the actions and drama that occur, and are the means by which products come about. Like power, purposes, and parts, processes should be negotiated with students so that they have stake in them, understand them, and find them fair. Processes are the articulations and expectations of labor in the ecology, and can be focused on as the primary element of the ecology for any given assignment or task. Focusing on labor and processes can be criteria for success, grades, development, and work completed, which is often a good beginning for cultivating an antiracist writing assessment ecology.
Products are the decisions and consequences of the ecology, which may be direct or indirect, and may be different for each student. Products explain the learning that has or is occurring in the ecology, and can be a way to focus later reflections in the course. Products may also be turned back into the ecology as parts in order to change or improve the ecology.
Finally, the material and figurative places that make up antiracist writing as- sessment ecologies characterize and determine interactions, power relations, and the people who get to be there or not. Places also are the occasion and context for processes. Mostly, however, places are by their historical natures locations of norming to a white racial habitus and of racing people into hierarchies. Places, therefore, are themselves always informed by the historical racial projects that raced all places, which means that teachers and students must be aware of this fact and make decisions about it together so that their classroom ecology is not simply a place of colonizing, coercion, or uncritical, hegemonic control. Paying explicit attention—calling attention to—the places that the ecology creates, how it creates them, who seems to reside in those places, and why they do, can help antiracist writing assessment ecologies become more critical of their effects on
students, and perhaps find alternative locations that are defined in alternative ways that are more responsive to students and their needs.
I offer Figure 1 as an initial way to visualize the interconnection of all seven elements. Place is primary with people situated firmly in place, and place con- stituted by people. Their most distinguishing feature is their consubstantiality. Processes, parts, and products are most connected to people, since they enact, create, and manipulate them, yet this means that they have a clear relationship with places of writing assessment. Finally power and purposes are connected to places and people of writing assessment ecologies, which produce processes, parts, and products. While this diagram is incomplete and does not show all of the relationships, no diagram can. Writing assessment ecologies are complex systems, resisting simple explanations and visual representations. Ecologies are more than visual. More than textual. They are more than this figure. The figure represents a small portion of the relationships of the seven interconnected ele- ments of a writing assessment ecology.